In 1854 Dr. Bartlett Durham sold four acres of land to
the North Carolina Railroad Company to build a new
station between
Hillsborough
and Raleigh and
before long a small settlement grew there which was to
become the city of Durham. The first tobacco factory
had opened in Durham in 1854 by R. F. Morris. Ten
years later, In 1865 the armies of Union and
Confederate forces gathered around Durham Station as
General Joseph E. Johnston negotiated his surrender to
General William T. Sherman at Bennett Place at the end
of the Civil War. Union troops liked the taste of the
local bright leaf tobacco. This began the growth of
Durham's tobacco industry and led the city to
prosperity. By 1880 Durham's population had grown
to over 2000. Textile mills began to grow along the
railroad lines and banks and insurance companies soon
appeared as money flowed into the community.
Residential neighborhoods grew around these
industries as workers filled the town to work for
tobacco companies owned by men like
Washington Duke. Duke had begun his tobacco empire
from a small log cabin on the Duke Homestead where
he was producing around 125,000 pounds of smoking
tobacco annually. In April 1874, Duke purchased
two acres near the railroad where he built a new
factory marking the beginning of a large scale
tobacco company which climbed rapidly to the top
of the industry. Cigarette making had been by
hand, a tedious job done by eastern European
immigrants who could roll about 4 a minute. Duke
took a chance on a new machine that had been
developed in 1880 by eighteen year old James
Bonsack that could make around 200 cigarettes
an hour (when working properly). After some
adjustments it was a success and Duke and
his sons became major players in the world of
tobacco. In 1890 they merged with their four
largest competitors to form the American Tobacco
Company and had a monopoly on tobacco products in
the USA. When this trust was broken up by the US
Supreme Court in 1911 four major companies
emerged. They were Liggett and Myers, P.
Lorillard, R. J. Reynolds and the American Tobacco
Company.
In 1892 Trinity
College moved to Durham from Randolf County to
land donated by Washington Duke and Julian Carr.
Following a 40 million dollar donation by James
Buchanan Duke, son of Washington Duke, the college
was renamed Duke in 1924.
In 1898 John Merrick founded the North Carolina
Mutual Life Insurance Company, the oldest and
largest African-American owned life insurance
company in America. M&F Bank, founded in 1907
was the strongest African-American owned bank in
the US. Both were located in the neighborhood of
Parrish Street which soon attracted more
African-American owned businesses and was known
throughout the country as "Black Wall Street." In
1910 North Carolina Central University was
founded by Dr. James E Shephard as the nations
first publicly supported liberal arts college for
African-Americans. Sit-ins were pioneered in
Durham.
During
the civil rights era, Reverend Martin Luther King,
Jr., made five public appearances in Durham. The
most dramatic was on February 16, 1960
at the Durham
Woolworth's in 1960. The historic lunch counter is
on display at North Carolina Central
University.
In 1910 the six story Trust Building on Main street
was the tallest building in North Carolina. By the
thirties a public works boom saw the construction of
the Post Office, the Armory, Durham Athletic Park, the
Snow Building and the CCB and Kress buildings as
Durham products became known internationally and money
flooded into the city. But as these companies grew and
acquired more holdings many of them left the city and
the center of Durham began to lose its vitality. By
the seventies shopping malls and suburbs had drawn
people away from downtown which was carved up by the
Durham Freeway and the Downtown loop in a flawed
attempt at 'urban renewal'.
The 1980s some of Durham's older neighborhoods
began to be revitalized. Two old tobacco
warehouses were restored creating the
Brightleaf Square shopping center. The old
Carolina Theatre was also restored and
became a center for live performances and films.
The Historic Preservation Society of Durham
was founded in 1974 to preserve Durham's
architectural heritage and people began buying old
houses in various neighborhoods. In the years
since many of the tobacco warehouses, factories
and mills have been converted into shopping
centers, condominiums, restaurants and offices.
The Single A Durham Bulls baseball
team, made famous by the film Bull
Durham (actually they were one of
the top drawing minor league teams before the
movie ever came out) left their old park to a new
$16-million brick ballpark in 1995 and the
Bulls began playing in the Triple-A International
League.
An important part of Durham's history is its
music. From the twenties to the forties
Durham was known for their distinctive regional
style of blues, known as Bull Durham Blues.
Musicians like Blind Boy
Fuller, legendary guitarist Rev Gary
Davis
and the
harp-guitar duo of Sonny Terry and Brownie
McGhee
, whose music influenced generations of other
blues players, used to perform in the Hayti
area and in the tobacco warehouse neighborhoods
downtown. This style is kept alive not only by
those younger musicians who have embraced it but
by the annual Bull City Blues Festival
during the first weekend of September and features
local and internationally known blues musicians ata three-day festival. In the seventies and
eighties Durham was once again a center for music,
this time with jazz musicans like
Brother Yusef Salim, Bus Brown, Eve
Cornelious and more recently Nneena
Freelon who has now gained national
recognition. The North Carolina Jazz Repertory
Orchestra founded in 1993 by James
Ketch and Gregg Gelb and sponsored by the North
Carolina Jazz Foundation, has established a
name for itself as one of the leading repertory
orchestras in the country and Duke music professor John Brown has become one of the most respected bass players and band leaders in the USA.
|
The loss of
industry was certainly a big blow to the city of
Durham, but the success of Duke University in
academics and sports (particularly basketball),
the growth of the Duke University Medical center
and other hospitals and health services, not to
mention nearby Research Triangle Park and North
Carolina Central University is more than
enough to off-set the losses and mistakes of the
past. The attraction of the downtown with
its empty warehouses and lofts to artists,
dancers, musicans and restaurateurs have
made the city a good bet for investors. In the
near future, if not right now Durham should begin
to look and feel like the exciting place it
once was. With a vibrant international and
artistic community, the people of Durham are
ready. The question is, are the
city's leaders?
See also: Things to do in Durham, Restaurants, Durham
Hotels, Duke
University, Annual
Events, Durham Photo Album
|